The First Christian Defender Of Stoic Virtue? Justus Lipsius And Ciceros Paradoxa Stoicorum

10.1163/ej.9789004176317.i-499.29

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Chapter Summary

This chapter emphasizes important traces equally be discerned in sixteenth-century editions and commentaries of Cicero's Paradoxa Stoicorum. Betul(e)ius, who taught philosophy and literature at Basle and Augsburg, was not only the author of Dramata sacra devoted his scholarly life to writing numerous commentaries on Cicero's De officiis, De amicitia and De senectute, as well as on Lactantius. His intention was to show his readers the essence of stoic moral doctrine. He took his ethical insights from Epictetus and his interpreters, Arrian and Simplicius, from Plutarch's against Colotes, from Musonius as reported in Stobaeus, from Cicero's Paradoxes. Lipsius's approach also reveals an interesting evolution in the interpretation of Stoic paradoxes vis-à-vis Christian dogma.